Newsletter of the Gardens and Parks Trust. Registered Charity No. 1013862. Company No. 2723974 SUMMER 2019 ISSUE No. 60 News Staffordshire Gardens & Parks Trust LETTER Published by the Staffordshire Gardens and Parks Trust. A walk round ’s historic parks and gardens In the days leading up to the walk, the country recorded record temperatures, and the fear was that, in the two hours the walk was expected to take, members would be wilting under the heat; in the event, of course, rain fell continuously, and a dozen hardy members and friends proceeded on a shortened tour clad in waterproofs and sheltering under umbrellas! Nonetheless, led by a knowledgeable and entertaining guide like Jonathan Oates, an experienced city guide better known as “Jono”, there was much to learn and enjoy.

The tour began in the Museum Gardens, the oldest part of , Lichfield’s premier park, which was first opened to the public in 1859, and visitors, impressed by the immaculate state in which the park is maintained or the colourfulness of its flowerbeds, cannot be blamed for not knowing that this was once marshland, made available for public use when silt was spread over it, taken from , of which it was once part before a causeway divided the lake into two parts.

Minster Pool and its neighbour, the larger , are both man-made, and provided support for two mills, a tannery and a fishery. They once supplied water to the Black Country when they were leased by the South Waterworks Company.

Minster Pool was given its serpentine shape, when it was dredged in the 1770s, in imitation of the Serpentine in London following a campaign led by Anna Seward, the celebrated “Swan of Lichfield”.

Given to the City and County of Lichfield in 1968, Minster Pool is now the responsibility of Lichfield City Council and Stowe Pool, popular with anglers, that of Council. Statue of Capt. John Smith

continued overleaf Former Library

The Museum Gardens were given their he had received for the sale of the land), St. Chad’s, as well as the Ryland Library in name because they stood next to the and a proposal to increase the rates by Manchester, before being taken over by Lichfield Free Library and Museum, built a halfpenny to furnish the library with the Linford Group in 1968. on land sold to the city council by John books met with strong resistance from Law, the Diocesan Chancellor, who was those who had no use for it. Sculpted by Kathleen Scott, the widow passionate in his belief that the poor of the Antarctic explorer, Captain Robert should have free access to books. It was The building is now the home of the Scott, and paid for by public subscription, built in 1857 in the Italian style made Lichfield Registry Office, said to be the Captain Smith’s statue was NOT, as some popular by Prince Albert, the Prince most popular in the county, the Library believe, situated in Lichfield following its Consort, who had designed Osborne having moved in 1989, first to the former rejection by Hanley, Smith’s birth place, House in that style. Friary Girls’ School and, in 2018, to the because the town’s authorities were deconsecrated St. Mary’s Church in the embarrassed by his part in the loss of his Lichfield’s Free Library was only the city’s main square. ship; documents show that Lichfield was second to be built in the country chosen because it lies midway between following the passing of the Public Two statues occupy dominant positions London and Liverpool, home to the Libraries Act in 1850, which gave local in the Gardens, the one of Edward VII in headquarters of the company which boroughs the power to establish free coronation robes, holding a sceptre, the owned the vessel. libraries, the first being in Salford, and was other of Captain Smith, captain of the unusual insofar as the popularity of the “Titanic”, on its ill-fated maiden voyage. Furthermore, the inscription on the base style was generally limited to the south of the statue proclaims that, far from of the country and not widely adopted Carved in Portland stone, the king’s being condemned as a pariah, Captain further north. statue, unveiled in 1908, was donated Smith had bequeathed to his countrymen to the city by one of its principal “the memory & example of a great heart, However, what Chancellor Law had benefactors, Robert Bridgeman, to mark brave life and a heroic death”. The statue overlooked was that the poor were not his year as Sheriff of Lichfield. The family was unveiled on July 27th, 1914, by his only impoverished and therefore could business of Robert Bridgeman & Sons, daughter Helen in the presence of a not afford books, but very few were which traded for more than eighty years, number of dignitaries. literate! Consequently, an appeal for was noted for its skill in stone-masonry donations of books met with very limited and woodcarving, working not only on The fountain was another of Chancellor success (even though Chancellor Law set Lichfield’s Cathedral, but on both of Law’s gifts to the city, though the lions a good example by donating the £25 Birmingham’s cathedrals, St. Philip’s and were added later.

Garden of Remembrance

kings who were slain by the Romans in a held at Darwin’s house or at Soho House, battle fought in 288 AD on the outskirts Matthew Boulton’s Birmingham home. Beacon Park now extends to more than of the city and whose bodies were Our interest was not in the house itself, seventy acres, the result of the generosity dismembered by the victors as a final act now run as a museum, but in the herb of another of Lichfield’s generous of humiliation. garden at the back. Developed in 1999, benefactors, Colonel Michael it is not on the site of Darwin’s original Swinfen-Broun, who wished to see Originally set into the façade of Lichfield’s garden, which was situated on the beautiful gardens in which the citizens of Guildhall, it was moved to the Museum outskirts of the city and was much bigger Lichfield “may be encouraged to enjoy Gardens when the Guildhall was re-built in size, but is designed to illustrate the rest and recreation”. It offers a wide in the nineteenth century, located first full range of herbs used in his time for range of leisure activities for residents in a rockery inside the balustrade at the cooking and other domestic purposes, of all ages, including golf, bowls, football front of the Gardens and finally to its medicine and dyeing. and tennis, as well as wide, well-paved present position in 2010. paths along which to promenade, and a The garden is divided into five sections. In segregated play area equipped with many From here, it was a short walk to the the Culinary Garden may be found herbs attractive features. Erasmus Darwin House, once the home used for flavouring food – thyme, parsley, of the renowned doctor, botanist, writer sage, borage and chives - and aromatic It also accommodates the Peace and poet – and, of course, grandfather herbs used for potpourri to sweeten the Woodland, a newly-planted labyrinth of the better-known Charles, who, sixty house, while in the Apothecary’s Garden made up of 1918 trees to mark the years later, was to develop some of his may be seen St. John’s Wort, whose oil centenary of the Armistice that brought grandfather’s ideas about evolution in his was used to treat wounds, Soapwort, an end to World War One, a Cedar “The Origin of Species”. whose oil was used as a soap, and White of Lebanon, a symbol of hope, its Horehound, used to relieve indigestion. centrepiece. Erasmus Darwin was one of the founder- members of The Lunar Society, a learned Dr. Darwin’s Medicine Chest contains Another piece of unusual masonry is to society-cum-dining-club established in poppies (for opium), foxgloves for be found in the secluded Herbaceous or 1775 and so-called because its monthly heart conditions, valerian for sleeping, Rose Garden. Known as “The Martyrs’ meetings were held when the moon was chamomile (used as an emetic) and Plaque”, it is composed of the remains of full, making travelling easier. Members rhubarb (for “cleansing”), while the Dyer’s a sculpture mounted on a plinth depicting included Josiah Wedgwood, James Watt, Garden contains plants used for colouring the dismembered bodies of the three and Joseph Priestley, and meetings were fabrics, and the plants grown in the Statue of Edward VII

Scented Garden were once used to bring belief grew that, if it were to die, the who lost their lives in both the First fragrant aromas to the house. Cathedral would fall into ruin. However, World War and, added later, the Second. it was removed three years ago and the It is also home to the only Verdun Oak in From here, we went a short distance Cathedral still stands, making one wonder Staffordshire, albeit second generation. Its round the corner to the secluded Vicars where these superstitions come from! picturesque setting, overlooking Minster Close. Approached through a narrow Pool, has led to its being described as one and enclosed passageway, it has a range Well-stocked flower beds run along the of the most beautiful in the country. of half-timbered houses built between side of the houses, adding colour to the 1315 and 1500 around three sides of a tranquillity of the Close. Our last visit was to Monks Walk, quadrangle college-style, a common hall Our walk back towards the city centre a secluded garden adjacent to the occupying the fourth. Here, John Saville, led us to the Garden of Remembrance, University Campus, whose name a member of the Vicars Choral noted for laid out in 1919 alongside Minster Pool, reminded us that it stood on what was the beauty of his voice, once lived with one of Lichfield two lakes, and officially once the site of a medieval friary. Once his wife and family. His relationship with opened the following year, making it within the precincts of the Lichfield Girls’ Anna Seward, who lived in the Cathedral one of the earliest war memorials High School, it was destined to become Close with her father, a canon of the commemorating the dead of the 1914- part of the University’s car park before Cathedral, led to scandal, though Anna 1918 War. the intervention of a group of volunteers, herself insisted that she loved Saville who restored and maintained the for his virtue and “no law on earth or Relatively simple in design, it is garden from 2003 until 2014, when the heaven forbids that he should be my rectangular in shape and divided into four building was bought for developing into friend or debars the liberty of conversing by footpaths, each quarter grassed with apartments by Pegasus. together”. Anna was in her lifetime a circular flower bed at its centre. At the described as “the most famous woman far end of the garden is the memorial For the next three years, the garden lay poet in England”. Arbiter of fashion, itself. Designed by Charles Edward neglected, until in March 2017, residents early feminist, she was friend to Walter Bateman, a Birmingham-based architect of the newly-occupied apartments and Scott, Samuel Johnson, Sarah Siddons and better known for designing houses in the members of the previous volunteer group Erasmus Darwin. Arts and Craft and Queen Anne styles convened and with financial support of and crafted by Charles Bridgeman and Pegasus began the task of restoring it. At the centre of the quadrangle is a Sons, its dominant feature is the figure large raised circular flower bed where of St. George, below which six panels once there was a tree around which a record the names of Lichfield citizens Vicars Close

Their work is open for public viewing, and visitors will, like us, be able to appreciate the group’s horticultural skills and application.

Long and narrow with curved ends, it is shaped like an amphitheatre and provided space for gentle promenading, although, after being taken round the garden on their first day at the school, girls were told that, thereafter, it was strictly out of bounds (because, the girls were convinced, teachers liked to go there in their free time for a crafty smoke!). The central bed is planted with trees and tall shrubs, and trees screen the garden from the existing car park, but the bed which runs along the wall dividing it from the former library buildings is planted with flowers and shrubs from different periods.

This brought our walk to an end. While some headed home, others went in search of a warming cup of tea, but all of us would have left Lichfield fully aware that the city’s attractions are not exclusively architectural, thanks to Jono’s encyclopaedic knowledge and engaging enthusiasm.

(This article is based on Jono’s commentary, augmented from a number of literary sources including “The Lichfield Book of Days”, by Neil Coley; “Cathedral City” by Howard Clayton; and “A-Z of Lichfield”, by Jono Oates; information provided by the Erasmus Darwin House; and a number of websites. Photos by the Editor).

Monks Walk “A place of pilgrimage for people of taste”

The recorded history of Enville begins in the 1530s, when a minor branch of the Grey family, of whom Lady Jane Grey, “the nine-days Queen” was perhaps the most notable member, moved to Staffordshire from the family home in Leicestershire, where they built “a very proper brick house” at Enville. After the family had been created Earls of Stamford in the following century, Enville became the family home, and Harry, the fourth Earl, who inherited the estate in 1739, set about laying out a garden and landscaping in a naturalistic style the estate, which he had expanded using the wealth which he had acquired through his marriage to Lady Jane Booth, daughter and heiress of the Earl of Warrington, owner of Dunham Massey (Mary inherited Dunham Massey on the death of her father, and their son, the 5th Earl, inherited the estate when she died in 1772).

In this he followed the example of his whereas the topography at Enville fifth Earls at Enville, but, of the many near neighbours, Lord Lyttelton, at was already composed of gently-rising features attributed to him, there is Hagley Hall, and William Shenstone hills, woods and running water and documentary evidence for only the at The Leasowes, near Halesowen. It provided scope for creating the eye- Gothic Greenhouse; for the others, like was Shenstone in particular, who had catching prospects which were central the Gothic Boathouse and the Gothic laid out his own estate, more restricted to eighteenth-century landscape design. Gateway, there are compelling stylistic in size, as a ferme ornée, who made similarities with features he is known the most significant contribution to Someone who has left a lasting to have designed. The Doric Temple is the development at Enville, though impression on the landscape is also attributed to him, and the upper no documentary evidence of his Sanderson Miller, an amateur architect of the two cascades bears a striking involvement survives other than diary who owned Radway Grange, a small resemblance to those he designed at entries (which has caused Jane Bradney, estate in Warwickshire, and who is Wroxton, in Warwickshire. the Estate Archivist, and our guide to noted for the picturesque follies he question how significant it actually designed for the estates of his friends. The fifth Earl was to show a similar was). He is perhaps best known for the mock independence of mind when he ruined castles to be seen at Hagley Hall, decided to develop the house; while he The Earl did not, however, turn to the in neighbouring Worcestershire, and consulted both Sir William Chambers, most pre-eminent landscape designer Wimpole Hall, in Lincolnshire. best known today for designing the of the age, for, as Jane pointed out, ten-storey pagoda in Kew Gardens, Brown’s style was to ‘scuplt’ landscapes, He worked for both the fourth and and Sir Robert Mylne, a minor figure

Enville Hall in the neo-classical movement, he did not turn to Robert Adam, the foremost architect of his time, instead commissioning a lesser-known Liverpool architect, John Hope, Snr, who extended the house to the west, Gothicised the front of the Tudor building and, somewhat incongruously, gave the rear of the house a Palladian façade. In 1904, the Hall was ravaged by a fire which left it roofless, but it was subsequently restored.

In developing the grounds the Earl took full advantage of the natural features, in particular the streams which ran down the hillside towards the house. Almost certainly inspired by the cascade he saw while visiting The Leasowes, he improved the sequence of cascades, in doing so providing the Earl’s guests with a memorable experience when the second cascade was added shortly The Gothic Greenhouse afterwards. The two cascades, linked step by step by a series of small pools, were fed from a hilltop reservoir, and the flow controlled by sluice gates.

Its banks planted with laurels and evergreens, it was, according to William Marshall, who visited Enville in 1803, “one of the most sublime productions the hand of Art has effected in rural scenery”.

The stream emptied into Temple Pool, so called because a Chinese temple, made, it is thought, from wood and with glazed windows and reached by a bridge, once stood on a small island at the centre of the lake. The temple was later dismantled when Chinoiserie had fallen out of fashion, and replaced as a lakeside feature by a boathouse, also believed to have been designed by Sanderson Miller, though Thomas The Cold Bath Wright, who designed the earlier landscape monuments at Shugborough, though work is in hand to clear them. just a heap of stones. may have had a hand in building it; and Other features that have not survived Ralph’s Bastion, another viewing point, it was from there that visitors enjoyed a include the three-roomed thatched was built round the base of the trunk of breath-taking spectacle. Cottage (also known as the Hermitage, a yew around which a wooden seat was though this designation may be a constructed. From here the visitor could The wall of the upper room facing the twentieth-century misnomer). It view the Hall, the Temple Pool and the lake was covered by a sliding window included an aviary and was used by Cascades of coloured glass and, once his visitors the family as a place of retreat. From had been refreshed, their host would The Rotunda, which Heely describes Twelve ‘people of taste’, all members signal to a servant to open the sluice as “an exceeding handsome light of the Trust, took part on a warm May gates, at the same time ordering the building…agreeably situated upon a afternoon on a guided tour of the window to be opened. The ensuing roar bold eminence” the visitor could enjoy estate led by Jane Bradney, the estate’s and rush of the water would have had a prospect as far as the tower of Kinver archivist, and accompanied by Mr. an electrifying effect on the visitors, church, “a very indifferent object”, in Peter Williams, husband of Mrs Diana one of whom even thought the torrent Heely’s opinion, who feared that it Williams, Enville’s owner. Though not powerful enough to sweep away the would be some time before newly- quite reaching the highest point, which house itself! planted trees would restore the pristine is marked by the ruined Shepherd’s beauty destroyed “merely for the sake Lodge, a medieval hunting lodge Sadly, the boathouse was demolished of a distant object”! Its six Ionic pillars converted into summerhouse from in the 1970s, when a tree fell on it, supported a domed roof, but now only which the Clent Hills and the Wrekin and reduced water levels mean that the base survives, and the Grotto is now can be seen, the party did negotiate a the cascades now flow only sluggishly, temporary stile to access Priests Wood so as to inspect Shenstone’s Chapel, dedicated to the poet after his death and never consecrated, used instead as a place for refreshment and a place to view the valley below through the double doors at the west end. The area around the Chapel was planted with yews, so as to create a sombre atmosphere that would be conducive to contemplative thought.

Our journey back to the Hall where our own refreshments awaited us took us to other features such as the Cold Bath, medically fashionable in the eighteenth century, when it was open to the elements, but subsequently provided with walls and a roof, now gone (In the days before #MeToo the use of cold baths was usually reserved for the menfolk!).

We made our way down the side of the Cascades along a path which, Jane reminded us, had been part of the original circuit and planted with evergreens, woodbine and roses. Finally, after pausing at The Gothic Greenhouse (or Billiard Room, or Museum, its name changing with its changing function), we made our way back to the house through the Long Walk, part of the Victorian garden created by the 7th Earl between the late 1840s and 1860, where once 100, 000 pelargoniums were grown). Shenstone’s Chapel The 19th century garden, which did not greatly impinge on the earlier creation, World War II, when, amongst countless (The substance of this article is based on covered seventy acres with ornamental other depredations, the magnificent the commentary Jane gave during the beds, shrubberies, pools and fountains, Seahorse Fountain, so-called because it course of the visit, augmented by reference an aviary and an eaglery, but its was comprised of a horn-blowing Triton to “A History of the Eighteenth Century centrepiece was without doubt the bursting out of the water flanked by Gardens at Enville Hall” by Sandy Great Conservatory, the second largest seahorses, which was the centrepiece Haynes, published in “The Ferme Ornée: in the country. Built in London in 1853, of the Ha-ha (or Seahorse) Pool, was Working with Nature”: the Proceedings it had Gothic-shaped windows domes blown to pieces by troops practising of the Association of Gardens Trusts in the Moorish style sixty feet high firing mortars! Annual Conference held at Priorslee Hall, and was brought to Enville in kit form Telford, on 4th-6th September 1998 and by barge, but was dismantled between At the conclusion of the visit, Jane published by the SGPT; “Enville”, an 1928 and 1938, and only its platform described the tour as great fun and overview by Historic England (in which and a single flue mark where it once complimented the party on the Enville is listed Grade II*); “Sanderson stood remain. interest and enthusiasm it had shown, Miller and His Landscapes” by Jennifer easily generated, it should be said, Meir; “Staffordshire” by Timothy Mowl The gardens became a great attraction when our guide was herself as highly & Dianne Barre in the “Historic Gardens when opened to the public, and at the knowledgeable and enthusiastic as of England” series); and “A description of height of their popularity attracted up Jane! Hagley, Envil and the Leasowes, wherein to 6,000 visitors a week, who were no all the Latin inscriptions are translated doubt entranced by a jet which rose to a This was the third time the Trust had and every particular beauty described. …” height of 180 feet (or so it was claimed!) visited the Enville estate in tours by Joseph Heely, dated 1777. Illustrated and the Great Conservatory. Sadly, led first by Sandy Haynes, Jane’s from photographs taken by C. J. Brown and they were closed within fifty years predecessor as Estate Archivist, and the Editor). because of vandalism, a not-unfamiliar then by Peter Williams, and its rich story, even in Victorian times (cf. The history and stunning landscape never Wombourne Wodehouse), although fail to enthral. this could not have compared to the damage the estate suffered at the hands of troops billeted at the Hall during Hodnet Hall “that rare achievement, a garden that always has something to enjoy” *

The present Hodnet Hall is the third on the site; originally, this was occupied by a twelfth-century Norman castle, which stood close to the main car park. It was replaced by a sixteenth-century timber-framed Tudor mansion house, whose site is now occupied by the Camellia Garden; only the stable block now stands, in use today as the restaurant.

In turn, this was replaced by the horticultural delights which will enthral the beginning of the season.” nineteenth-century neo-Elizabethan any visitor. John Hyde, who also took part in red-brick house, reduced in size in the the visit, adds, “The gardens enjoy 1960s, which occupies a commanding Michael Faarup, describing the visit, a sunny location, which evidently position on a flat south-facing writes, “Members congregated in the brought all the plants out of the winter plateau from which the distant South car par park on a cool and breezy day sooner than in the surrounding area. Shropshire Hills can be viewed. as the sun emerged from the clouds, In particular, members were able to and continued to shine for the duration enjoy the magnolia, camellia, azalea, The garden the visitor now sees is of the visit, greatly adding to the rhododendron and many other plants the vision and creation of Brigadier enjoyment of the gardens. Members as they either peaked or came to an end A. C. W. Heber-Percy, father of the were informed that the guide who had of their spring blossom. The dry winter present owner, Algernon Heber-Percy, been expected to accompany members and spring had kept the gardens, woods who, beginning in 1922, started the would not be able to do so for personal and lawns mud free, which added to challenging task of converting a marshy reasons, so members used the maps the enjoyment of the visit. The gardens, hollow in front of the house into a sixty- and their in-built compasses to explore paths and surrounding grounds are acre garden of stunning beauty which the grounds together. No other visitors maintained to the highest standards.” delights visitors whatever the season. were present, so members had the gardens to themselves, which was a joy Members unable to take part in this By building a series of dams, Brigadier “We felt privileged to have our own visit but still wishing to visit the garden Heber-Percy created a chain of seven private party on a day when the garden should consult its website to note the lakes at different levels which formed was not open to the public, enjoying days when it is open to the public. the central axis of the garden which the magnificent spring flowers and They are sure to be delighted as well as he planted out with rare trees and bog blossoms to ourselves and walking impressed by what is nothing less than plants. the woodland walks beside the chain one man’s gift to successive generations of lakes. The kitchen garden was of garden lovers. Until then, the garden had been limited immaculately laid out, and we met the to a single terrace to the south of the proud young lady responsible for its *Barbara and Alan Palmer, “Some Hall and a small formal garden to the planting and upkeep. Many varieties of Shropshire Gardens”, Shropshire Books, west. vegetables were planted and sown at 1980.

Now covering sixty acres, this is truly a garden for all seasons: from April, the first magnolias, rhododendrons and camellias bloom, carpeted by daffodils, and narcissi, in turn to be followed by azaleas, clematis, wisteria, laburnum and paeonies as Spring gives way to Summer.

As the year progresses, hydrangeas, agapanthus, euphorbia, fuschia and acers make their contribution to the beauty of the garden.

There is no place in this brief article for a catalogue of all the plants and shrubs which go to make Hodnet Hall a Mecca for garden-lovers; suffice to say that, at any time between Hodnet Hall May and September, it offers “An Undervalued Park which should be better known…”

…these are the words of Dr. Dianne Barre, who, following the formal business of the Trust’s Annual General Meeting, gave a most interesting and entertaining talk on the development of Ingestre Hall’s gardens and park. Describing the park as “very sophisticated”, she suggested that this was because it had all but vanished and was no longer recognised as an eighteenth-century park.

She began her talk by tracing its early history, beginning with Walter Chetwynd, who, in the years following the English Civil Wars of the seventeenth century, laid out formal gardens around the house. While Michael Burgers’ engraving of Ingestre Hall which appeared in Robert Plot’s “The Natural History of Staffordshire” in 1686 provided the first known illustration, it is thought to have over-simplified the design, though it shows an enclosed forecourt in front of the house divided into four lawns featuring obelisks and statuary, and in each of the two furthest corners “a little house” like summer houses “with towers and balls on top”. The South Front viewed from Brown’s landscape

The engraving also shows a second of classical garden buildings in let, while the Rotonda has been enclosed garden to the north side of the county. Now only the pavilion relocated and is now to be found in the Hall, that is, on the side opposite remains in situ and is leased to The the neighbouring village of Tixall. to the church, similar in style, Landmark Trust, which, following Of the Tower, only the foundations divided into a pattern of lawns with restoration, runs it as a holiday remain, shrouded in woodland an axis punctuated by three circular beds, each with statues on plinths. Celia Fiennes, who visited Ingestre on one of her many journeys covering the length and breadth of England (and who is quoted above), also describes a summer house which gave access to a bowling- green and fish ponds. Beyond the bowling- green was “a very fine wilderness with many large walks of a great length, full of all sorts of trees”.

In the years which followed, classical buildings were added to the Wilderness, and the formal walks were now terminated by a pavilion, rotunda and tower, making what was thought to be the first sequence The Orangery interior before restoration The Orangery interior after restoration He was involved with the estate until the 1760s, in that time employing seventy men clearing the woodland close to the house over just one year. However, this was not one of his more lucrative commissions, for he received only two payments, one of £100 and the other £200, which may suggest that he was not present to supervise much of the work. Brown was followed by another iconic landscape designer, William Emes, and, by 1789, the formal gardens around the house had been replaced by lawns. However, in the early years of the following century formal gardens were restored around the house, and John Nash commissioned to design a new The Orangery before restoration garden front in the Jacobean style. The garden itself was planted with a French-style parterre infilled with coloured gravel.

Yet another iconic figure may have been involved at Ingestre; a letter from Humphry Repton survives in which he asks to be allowed to pay a visit.

A more spectacular addition was the Orangery,† designed by James “Athenian” Stuart and built by Samuel and James Wyatt, its design almost exactly replicating that of the Orangery built at Blithfield Hall in about 1769. Until recently, it was believed that Blithfield’s Orangery was built the following year, but

The Orangery after restoration the absence of any map before 1839 showing the Orangery and the and barely accessible, having been and focussed his energies on its facts that the bricks used are of the abandoned and finally demolished improvement. slightly larger size used in the 19th following a family tragedy in which century than those used in the 18th a gamekeeper killed himself and his Brown was commissioned to have caused some experts to think family with a shot-gun. ‘naturalise’ the Wilderness by that the Orangery may have been removing many of the trees and built some fifty years later than the By 1743 the garden had become replacing them with open grassland, previously accepted date. old-fashioned in appearance; and thus opening up the view, and much of the formal terracing around softening the rigidity of the walks The approach to the Orangery was the house was removed. This burst by making them more sinuous. down the Long Walk, still a striking of activity was in part driven by a However, he did not add one of his feature of the gardens. falling-out with Robert Walpole, the more distinctive signature features, de facto Prime Minister, as the result a lake, the only water feature other The ownership of the Ingestre of which Walter Chetwynd, grandson than fountains to be added to the estate passed to the Talbot family, of the Walter who built the Hall, gardens later being a small canal, later Earls of Shrewsbury, when having lost favour and influence at subsequently filled in. The classical Catherine, daughter (and heiress) court, had withdrawn to his estate, buildings, including the Pavilion, of Walter, the second Viscount enriched by the South Sea Bubble, already in place when Brown arrived, Chetwynd, who married John Talbot, (unlike many unfortunate investors) remained. and their son, another John, inherited the Ingestre estate on the death of his mother. The Chetwynd- Talbots, as the family became known, remained in possession of Ingestre until the 1960s, when the estate was split up and sold, the Hall being purchased by West Bromwich Borough Council, now Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council, who run it as an arts centre and wedding venue.

† It was in the newly-restored Orangery that The Trust held its Annual General Meeting, the first organisation to enjoy its new facilities. The Pavilion

Listed Grade II by English Heritage, it was brought back from its neglected state by a band of volunteers, who, in 2012, seeing its potential as a community asset, formed The Friends of Ingestre Orangery, raising over £1.5m. to restore it to its former glory.

While the original building provides well-lit space for social events such as the lunch which followed the formal business of the AGM, a ‘pod’ which is linked, but not attached, to it provides additional covered space for a kitchen, toilets, storage and meetings and, as on the afternoon of The Long Walk the AGM, the talk on the history of

Ingestre by Dianne Barre, reported above.

This article is based on a talk given to (In ”The Historic Gardens of England” The Orangery is now a Trust the Trust by Dr. Dianne Barre at the series), and “A Short History of Ingestre” administered by four Trustees, Trust’s Annual General Meeting held in by Dr. Anne Andrews .Illustrated from whose Chairman, Aaron Chetwynd, the Orangery, Ingestre, augmented by photographs taken by C. J. Brown and himself a professional architect who reference to “Staffordshire” by Timothy Editor. contributed substantially to the Mowl and Dianne Barre. design of the ‘pod’, was our host

Officers of the Trust (2019/20)

President: Charles Bagot-Jewitt Members of Council of Management: Chairman: Alan Taylor Alan Taylor Treasurer: Michael Faarup Michael Faarup Membership Secretary: Michael Faarup Julie Hall Newsletter Editor: Bryan Sullivan John Hyde Website Manager: Julie Hall Bryan Sullivan Company Secretary: Catherine Thorpe

Visit the Trust’s website www.staffs.org.uk for information about the aims of the Trust, its activities and its publications, including past issues of the Newsletter.